The Audacity Of Vagueness

I haven’t yet had a chance to watch the speech Barack Obama gave in Berlin. But I have a feeling that it will not measure up to all of the hype and hysteria that have surrounded it. When a candidate for President gives a speech overseas, his audience is mainly used as props and the real focus of the speech are the folks back home. You know, the ones that vote. When a President gives a speech overseas, that speech is necessarily filled with substance and serious diplomatic meaning. The words of a President are consequential. The words of a candidate for President don’t amount to anything in diplomatic terms because a candidate for President is in no position whatsoever to promise anything.

Thus, I am not surprised by Andrew Ferguson’s review of the Obama speech. Seeing as how Barack Obama really didn’t have anything consequential to say and was just looking for a fabulous set of television images to be beamed back hom, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that for all of the great imagery, the speech Obama gave struck Ferguson as being nothing more than fluff. I will reserve full judgment until I have a change to watch the speech myself. But I imagine that I will wonder what the big deal was.